Futures Conference 2024
The Grammar School at Leeds held a Futures Conference for Y10 and 12 students from GSAL and two partner schools, Cardinal Heenan Catholic High School and Mount St Mary’s Catholic High School. This year’s conference was the fourth annual conference and the first one in which all speakers were on site, to maximise the sense of engagements amongst all participants, students and speakers. The conference involved 50 speakers representing various sectors and professions speaking to 420 students from Y10 – Y12. The annual conference aims to inform and inspire students about their future careers and the skills employers look for.
Aims
- To inspire and inform GSAL students and students from partner schools of potential careers and pathways and the skills required to get there;
- To provide an engagement opportunity for targeted alumni, parents and other potential donors, to engage with the school and students;
- To provide added value to GSAL’s educational provision beyond the classroom, and to extend this value to students from partner schools;
- To contribute to GSAL careers provision y increasing opportunities for pupils to have contact with employers and employees;
- To enhance staff understanding of the rapidly changing economy and labour market;
- To raise awareness amongst staff of the benefit of alumni engagement on teaching and learning.
Background
The Futures Conference originally came about as a way of further developing the school’s careers provision, increasing engagement opportunities with alumni and enabling them to ‘give back’ to the school and the wider Leeds community of schools. Originally, all sessions were held remotely, as a result of the pandemic, and conferences afterwards increasingly provided fewer remote sessions and more in-person ones. In person sessions also allowed for skills-based workshops in addition to panel discussions. The 2024 conference was the first one to be held completely live on-site. Similar to earlier conferences, some sessions were still recorded this year, and the collection were made available to the wider network of partner schools. All students, GSAL and visitors, can choose which sessions they wish to attend.
Resources
50 speakers from the alumni and parent community;
30 teaching staff hosting the sessions, which involves interviewing the panellists about their career backgrounds and thoughts about the future;
Videographer to film and edit recordings;
6 members of the external relations team to organise and run the event;
Support from the school’s SLT, catering team, technical staff, IT team and parent association.
Impact
Two schools attended, a total of 40 students. They were given a bespoke welcome talk from out head of sixth form and treated to breakfast and mid-morning snack foods before they departed at lunchtime. The visiting students asked many questions of the panellists, as all students were encouraged to do. Qualitative feedback from visiting teachers was very positive and children were happy and engaged throughout the day.
Pupil Involvement
400 - Year 10 and 12 students from GSA
40 - Year 10 and 11 from visiting schools
Shared recordings with 10 partner schools to make available to their students
Frequency
The Futures Conference is an annual event one-day event and will be repeated next year.
